More on Grounding Theories of Intrinsicality

Another account of intrinsicality in terms of grounding starts with
the idea that the core of an analysis of intrinsicality should be
independence of accompaniment (Witmer, Butchard and Trogdon 2005). The
account first holds that an object \(x\) has a property \(F\) in
an intrinsic fashion iff (i) \(F\) is independent of accompaniment,
and (ii) if \(x\) has \(F\) at least partly in virtue of having
some other property \(G\), then \(G\) is independent of
accompaniment. It then holds that \(F\) is intrinsic iff,
necessarily, anything that has \(F\) has \(F\) in an intrinsic
fashion.

Unlike both Langton and Lewis’s account and Weatherson’s
account, in which independence of accompaniment also plays an
important role, the Witmer, Butchard and Trogdon account classifies
identity properties, like the property of being Obama, as intrinsic.
Something having the property of being Obama, for example, plausibly
doesn’t have this property in virtue of having some other
property. Given the property of being Obama is independent of
accompaniment, this account therefore plausibly classifies it as
intrinsic. This suggests that the account is best seen as an account
of the distinction between interior and exterior properties (although
see Witmer, Butchard and Trogdon 2005:349 for a different
diagnosis).

As Witmer, Butchard and Trogdon mention, their theory needs some
relatively fine judgments about what properties are instantiated in
virtue of which other properties in order to handle some hard cases,
such as the property of being a rock. They also acknowledge that their
account classifies all indiscriminately necessary properties as
extrinsic, since indiscriminately necessary properties fail to be
independent of accompaniment. However, some indiscriminately necessary
properties, such as the property of being self-identical, are
intuitively intrinsic.

Trogdon (2009) has argued that the account is also incompatible with
priority monism, the view championed by Schaffer (2007) that the
universe as a whole is more fundamental than its parts (and everything
else). In reponse, Trogdon has proposed a modified version of the
account which he claims is compatible with both priority monism and
priority pluralism, the view that the universe’s atomic parts
are fundamental. (See Skiles 2009 for criticism of Trogdon’s
account, and Trogdon 2010 for a response.)

Like Langton and Lewis’s account and Weatherson’s account,
the Witmer, Butchard and Trogdon account and the account of Trogdon
(2009) face the objection that they are incompatible with certain
metaphysical views that posit necessary connections between wholly
distinct entities, such as the view that each thing \(x\) is wholly
distinct from its singleton set \(\{x\}\), and is such that,
necessarily, it exists iff its singleton \(\{x\}\) exists. As noted
in section
3.5
of the main document of this entry, both of these accounts also face
the objection that they are incompatible with metaphysical theories
that allow facts that are intrinsically about something to ground a
fact that is intrinsically about something wholly distinct from
it.